Depleted Tennessee Farmland Is Now Teeming With Wildlife

In May 2010, extraordinarily heavy rainfall hit Tennessee. In some parts of the state, as much as 20 inches fell over two days. Dams were inundated, waterways overflowed and communities experienced historic flooding. Farmers in West Tennessee aren t strangers to floods.

Their farmland is adjacent to the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, the historic floodplain of the Mississippi River that encompasses nearly 24 million acres from southern Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico and is one of the most flood-prone regions of North America. Still, 2010 was different. As the Forked Deer River overflowed, it eroded makeshift levees and dumped sandy soil onto the farmland, making it hard to return it to productive land, according to David Blackwood, Executive Director of the West Tennessee River Basin Authority (WTRBA).

But this declining usefulness also made it easier to envision restoring the land to its more natural state. And through a partnership between conservation nonprofit The Nature Conservancy, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and WTRBA, that s exactly what happened.

The result is Middle Fork Bottoms State Park, a lush 860 acre parcel teeming with wild turkeys, Great Blue Herons, white-tailed deer and endangered bats, among others. The project is a callback to the region s original ecology: Marshy wetlands, restored streams and 250,000 newly planted hardwood trees like sycamore, cottonwood and a variety of oaks.

Crucially, there s also recreational space so that visitors can experience the restored surroundings up close. Approximately 15,000 people visit Middle Fork Bottoms during peak summer months. Credit: TNC. This new park isn t just a boon to the region, it s also being used as a blueprint for other projects in the area that aim to restore floodplains and reintroduce natural habitats.

We envisioned this as a demonstration project to showcase the fact that floodplains offer natural solutions to a lot of the problems that communities in West Tennessee face, says Rob Bullard, The Nature Conservancy s Director of Freshwater Programs in Tennessee. Whether it s flood control, or water quality, or wastewater assimilation. They even benefit the groundwater and the aquifer recharge. When left to their own devices, rivers like to meander, says Bullard.

This is important for controlling erosion, but it s also important for keeping water on the landscape longer and slowly absorbing water which is not great for farmland. Starting in the early 1900s, West Tennessee underwent an intense period of channelization, which essentially means straightening out the rivers and filling in all the curves.

If you look at a map of the rivers in West Tennessee, almost all of them are straight lines, Bullard says. This made the rivers run faster, which sped up erosion, a significant issue in this region because of the soil. Our bedrock is several hundred to thousands of feet below us, Blackwood says.

We re living in a literal sandbox. These factors made it an ideal project for The Nature Conservancy and the WTRBA to collaborate on. Starting in 2015, the former began buying land from farmers, ultimately acquiring nine contiguous tracts of land making up just over 1,220 acres enough for the state park and a buffer between it and nearby residential areas.

Wetlands development at Middle Fork Bottoms. Credit: David Blackwood. WTRBA s work on the land began in 2018 and involved federal, state and local agencies; volunteer groups; local universities; even a beekeeping club that placed hive boxes on the land.

Blackwood says the biggest challenge was there from the outset: Designing a space that was intended to flood. We don t often look at a landscape and think, I want to make sure it floods this much,' he says. We re usually designing it to not flood. Blackwood, who has an engineering background, says flipping that mindset was tough, especially because it meant implementing a more passive strategy, free of gates and pipes and things you have to maintain or be aware of when they go wrong.

Instead, they leaned on the natural landscape: Rerouting existing drains to maximize effectiveness, removing obstacles like levees and invasive vegetation that hampered water flow, and filling in ditches or regrading portions of land to restore microtopography. Weighed down by negative news? Our smart, bright, weekly newsletter is the uplift you’ve been looking for. [contact-form-7] The benefits to the surrounding areas were almost immediate.

Sanders Bluff Road borders the north end of the park, and Blackwood says it was historically closed several times a year because of flooding. But as soon as his team removed some of the old levees and started to realign channels on the floodplain, the flooding essentially stopped. In the last few years, he says it s decreased by about 85 percent. The floodplain restoration has been a huge success, but the benefits to the surrounding communities go far beyond that.

Blackwood says West Tennessee has historically lacked public spaces for residents to enjoy, and many people probably don t even know we have the rivers we have because you can t see them. When designing Middle Fork Bottoms, they set out to change that. We worked the recreational components in so visitors could see all of these features: The wetlands, the levee breaks, the river. Middle Fork Bottoms opened in 2022 as a recreation area before officially becoming a state park in August 2024.

While all 860 acres are open to the public, much of it depends on how brave you are, Blackwood says, as most of the land doesn t have paved trails or access routes. But recreational areas were crucial to the project s success and integrated from the beginning. There are more than four miles of paved hiking trails, five lakes for kayaking and fishing, and a number of benches, picnic tables and green spaces for visitors to take advantage of.

Since Bill Lee was elected Governor of Tennessee in 2019, 14 new state parks have been funded, including Middle Fork Bottoms. Credit: David Blackwood. It has also become a site for education. This summer, a floating classroom opened in the park which, along with other educational programming, was supported by a $150,000 grant from Toyota.

The company has a large manufacturing facility in nearby Jackson, and Blackwood says it sponsors events like corporate cleanups as well. During the summer, 15,000 people visit the park each month. And its evolution is still in progress. Blackwood says the state of Tennessee has earmarked $23 million for a visitor center, restrooms, two boardwalks and more trails.

To date, the land s restoration and development has cost about $13 million, including the cost of land, which was a combination of state, federal and private funds. This work in West Tennessee is part of a broader push by Governor Bill Lee s administration. Since he was elected in 2019, 14 new state parks have been funded. At all levels of state government, we see a lot of recognition that the waterways of Tennessee are unique, Bullard says.

They re important drivers of our economy and our way of life, and they also happen to harbor more species of fish and mussels and crayfish than anywhere else in the temperate world. And while Bullard and Blackwood are thrilled with the outcome of Middle Fork Bottoms State Park, they both see its legacy as going far beyond that 860 acre parcel.

Bullard says the project is providing a template for similar work not just in West Tennessee, but in Western Kentucky and Eastern Arkansas as well. It s also a showcase for how well different agencies and organizations can work together, from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, to the Army Corps of Engineers and the state Department of Environment and Conservation.

These projects require intense collaboration from lots of different [groups], Bullard says. When embarking on a new project, we can point to the roles that everyone played and how it all comes together. Wait, you're not a member yet? Join the Reasons to be Cheerful community by supporting our nonprofit publication and giving what you can.

Join Cancel anytime There s already another project in the works near Jackson, with the South Fork of the Forked Deer River. While much of that land is forested, it has similar issues: Alluvial soil in a floodplain that was channelized and has seen massive erosion, leading to flooding.

The Nature Conservancy has already purchased about 1,000 acres and is working with Blackwood and the WTRBA to start putting the other pieces in place. Jackson has experienced significant flooding over the last 15 years. The expected restoration project won t just benefit the floodplain, but businesses and residents of the entire community. Blackwood says the biggest lesson from Middle Fork Bottoms will be applicable there: How to design the land to encourage flooding, not artificially keep it at bay.

We have tried to keep floods out of places where we re not going to be successful doing that and we put [waterways] in places they shouldn t be, he says. And history has shown that land just kind of goes to ruin. This [project] gives you something tangible to point to and say, This is how it [should] work.' The post Depleted Tennessee Farmland Is Now Teeming With Wildlife appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.